Castanets Exclusive: Saltspring Island
Frank sent me three photographs. I will be posting one a week. This is called Saltspring Island. He’s spent time there; its one of the Gulf Islands on the Canadian West Coast just off Vancouver Island. I love how he blurs the line between photography and painting.
For more of his photography go to frankgrisdale.com.
The genre blurring ties in with a photograph I have hanging in my bedroom by someone else, taken in Europe. The picture is of an older woman from the neck down with a bag slung from her hand, and it looks like a cross between Matisse and Gauguin. When I asked him how he managed it, he told me that he simply covered the lens with a nylon stocking which gave the picture texture. I’m sure he did a little more in the darkroom as well.
I’m not sure exactly why this element of artifice, this miming of painting, strengthens the image. Is it that it conveys solidity, the image is taken from the impermanence of everyday experience and shifted toward stasis, its very muddying somehow elevating it?
Maybe it plays off our expectations and education re paintings. We’ve been introduced to art in certain ways, and conditioned to see and respond, too, in certain ways.
Comment by OmbudsBen — March 26, 2008 @ 2:51 pm
I’m off to check out the link. That’s a damn fine image. Salt Spring Island (useless trivia) is the most expensive real estate in Canada.
Comment by Stevo — March 28, 2008 @ 4:32 pm
[...] island Not long ago, this blog published Frank Grisdale’s Saltspring Island photograph (see here). Turns out it was selected as an entry of the PX3: Prix de la Photographie [...]
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